Blue Cross Blue Shield to Launch Ad Campaign Against Obama Health Plan
President Barack Obama has issued the call for the medical insurance industry to produce significant reform so millions of Americans still uncovered or underinsured by the healthcare insurance industry can obtain affordable medical care and to rein in the skyrocketing cost of premiums for the individuals who do have access to it. In response, Blue Cross Blue Shield has notified the Washington Post that it has an ad campaign in the development stage that will lambaste many of the reforms advocated by the president.
According to the president, in the next decade, the United States will be investing as much as 20% of the nation’s economy on healthcare expenses while getting less benefit from the expenditure. He’s also expressed the opinion that the current state of medical care in the US is one reason for the current economic crisis.
Many medical industry leaders have become active participants in the government’s on-going discussion of healthcare reform but the medical insurance industry has remained in strong opposition to some issues currently being debated, especially the possibility of a government-sponsored healthcare plan. Insurance industry leaders say a government-based plan would put the industry in competition with the government and seriously undermine its ability to make money. According to Lew Borman, a Blue Cross Blue Shield spokesperson, there are better ways to go.
The insurance industry giant proposes instead to build on the current employer-based healthcare plans that cover approximately 160 million Americans at the moment. To broadcast their opposition to a government-sponsored program, Blue Cross Blue Shield has hired a media firm to produce videos that will be posted on the internet later this year.
The videos will play to the fears of a socialized medical system while addressing the possibility of private sector insurance innovation and improvement. According to Borman, three key strategies for stopping the ever-rising costs of health care in America are:
- Improvement of both quality and effectiveness over the current level of care
- Promotion of better health via lifestyle change and prevention
- The insurance industry’s willingness to continue providing better care, not merely more care
If adapted, the plan President Obama has described calls for a non-profit plan, run by the federal government, that will provide coverage to all Americans who do not qualify or cannot afford insurance from the employer-based private sector. One particular benefit to the president’s program would be the elimination of pricey salaries at the executive level.
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Obama is great! I hope he limits ALL executive salaries! I hope he puts the for profit Medical system Out Of Business!! No one should profit from person’s misery. Corporate greed is out of control in the USA. By the way, I’m a life long republican.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield should bbe called Blue Cr**/Blue Sh**. They are a very sorry excuse for a “healthcare” company. Had them forced on us, wouldn’t cover a lot of basic meds, argued about marital status (I am a lesbian legally married in Texas to her wife of 10+ years) and in general are NOT a good healthcare provider. When we’ve already GOT a system in place to deliver at least a basic plan of healthcare (MediCare & MedicAid), WHY are we - AND the President - wasting time listening to their lies and prevarications?
Go GIT ‘em, Mr. President!
My husband is self employed and we are paying Blue Cross more per year than we pay for our mortgage (Principle Interest tax) per year. How is Blue Cross funding the ad campaign? They better not be taking a penny of our fees to fund it.
Worst of all we live in Massachusetts which has so-called universal health care. Our rates went up 20% the year that went in place. We must take the profit out of health care, and the Massachusetts system did NOT do that.
I’m a 39 year old male with a few minor pre-existing conditions (acid reflux, allergies, high triglycerides) for which I take prescription medications and pay the increased copays and my premiums. Other than that, I’ve had little to no problems. I work for myself, and in 2007 I obtained individual healthcare coverage from Anthem BCBS at about a 75% higher premium than originally quoted by them. Then they raised my premium 28% in 2008 and now 40% in 2009. I’ve tried to get insurance through other providers that is more affordable but was declined by Aetna and Golden Rule/United Healthcare for my pre-existing conditions. So now I’m Anthem’s b***h and have to pay whatever they want or be uninsured. If they drop me, I’ll be forced close my business and try to go and find a job with an employer under whose plan I can be covered. Anthem is crushing the American dream! Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege of the wealthy and healthy!
I support President Obama and healthcare reform. But the calls by many to “Put private insurers out of business” bothers me. No one ever takes into consideration the tens of thousands of average Americans employed by all the various Blue Cross Blue Shield Association plans alone when suggesting this.Not to mention all the other private insurers.Average hardworking people depending upon paychecks from these companies to support their families. Nobody thinks about that.Yes,health care reform is of paramount importance, but in today’s world putting several hundred thousand more people out of work is not going to help anybody.As a matter of fact it would exacerbate the problem.In fact the only 2008 presidential candidate that even considered this aspect at all when discussing health care reform was Barack Obama.Thankfully.
see if I buy blue cross/blueshield anymore in my lifetime…
Joe wrote: “No one ever takes into consideration the tens of thousands of average Americans employed by all the various Blue Cross Blue Shield Association plans alone when suggesting this.”
Their livelihood constitutes a real injury to our society, so it has to go. These people can be retrained at government expense for some industry that is not a predatory parasite on our country, but the Health Insurance Industry is beyond redemption.
i hope someone, somewhere is primed to refute distortions that are bound to be an integral component of this campaign. BC/BS is finally revealing itself to be the sleazy money-grubbing operation many of us have always thought it to be. i especially hope there will be a tracking system for identifying what claims are rejected under exisitng BC/BS provisions, and an analysis of the cost-benefit ratio of the company’s finances. i suspect the campaign is designed to camouflage how much money the company really makes, compared to what it would make if we had a decent health care delivery system for everyone.
I have had BC/BS all my life. Since birth when my parents had it and after that for my own family. I personally am currently pleased with BC/BS for its flexibility and health care professionals. Sure the cost goes up, but it goes up across the board. I like the idea of having an option and not being told I have to go with a specific plan. I don’t mind paying the amount I pay, when I can choose my doctor, do not have to go to a few assigned hospitals of poor quality, when I can go anywhere in the country and know I will be covered.
Before we go jumping on the band wagon of the best possible choice based on price. I have to say but a few things and they are as follows:
You can’t put a price on YOUR health!
You get what you pay for….You pay little you get little.
HMO really stands for (HEALTH MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION)
I am not saying that anyone one person is right or wrong, but KUDOS to BC/BS for taking a stand.
Ken Duernkensen wrote: “Their [insurance industry employees'] livelihood constitutes a real injury to our society, so it has to go. These people can be retrained at government expense for some industry that is not a predatory parasite on our country…”
Quite an amusing statement, in light of this year’s events. As a nation, we’ve just witnessed our president spend hundreds of billions of our tax dollars propping-up far less-productive industries. (Think flailing auto-manufacturing and insolvent financial institutions). If ever there were groups of people whose livelihoods could be described as ‘injurious to society’ or ‘parasitic’, it would be these. If left on their own, these groups would long have been out of business.
Instead, we as taxpayers have been forced to bear the cost of supporting these companies and workers that now represent a far greater drain on society.
Talk about an opportunity for retraining.
Time for single payer. These greedy deathmongers will never change!
LET US HAVE THE SAME MEDICAL CARE SYSTEM LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD. ELIMINATE THE INSURANCE CORPORATIONS AND ELIMINATE THE PROFIT MOTIVE FOR THE ECO’S OF THESE CORPORATIONS.THE REST OF THE WORLD IS NOT CONTROLLED BY THE INSURANCE AND PHARMACICAL INDUSTRIES. WE DESERVE THE SAME COVERAGE LIKE THE POLITICIANS NOTHING LESS. SUPPORT REPRESENTATIVE JOHN CONYERS SINGLE PAYER BILL HR 676
Check out the history of BC/BS…a book by Sylvia Law entitled Blue Cross:What Went Wrong. It is about 20 years old but very a propos.
Those people who lose their jobs in the for-profit health insurance industry, could maybe apply for jobs in the not-for-profits? all health insurance used to be not -for profit, by law. Reagan changed all that. Maybe the money the CEO’s took in “salaries” and bonuses could be diverted to a fund to pay for retraining and a buyout for these employees
I am in total agreement with Mark J.Clark the first writer!
I went on BCBS insurance on my husband’s policy, after I moved from Nevada (after being treated successfully for cancer; self employed) and could no longer keep the Chamber of Commerce insurance which was limited to the State of Nevada (HMO, cost $350/month, 2002. The first year the Blue Cross premium cost $7000, the next year they reduced benefits and increased premiums to $10,000; the third year they reduced more benefits and went up to $13,000. That amounted to a crummy Major Medical policy for a Platinum price. So now I have no insurance as I choose not to bankrupt my family to pay for nothing. I anxiously await a public/single payer policy under Obama’s plans, and keep my fingers crossed that I do not have another major medical issue. I do not deserve to live with that fear, due to the greed of the insurance giants.
John wrote: “…we’ve just witnessed our president spend hundreds of billions of our tax dollars propping-up far less-productive industries. (Think flailing auto-manufacturing and insolvent financial institutions). If ever there were groups of people whose livelihoods could be described as ‘injurious to society’ or ‘parasitic’, it would be these. If left on their own, these groups would long have been out of business.”
I agree with you that the financial inustry is injurious and parasitic - they produce nothing but their own wealth. Auto manufacturing in the US as been poorly managed, and damaged by our banana-republic trade policies, but they are hardly in the same negative league as the health insurance industry.
Back in the ’70’s there some trouble with car-makers cashing in on people’s deaths (the Pinto case), but that always-looming capitalist cancer has been largely regulated out of them.
Health insurers, however, are in the business of denying care, and pulling the rug out from under as many fully-insured suckers as they can. Its how they earn bonuses and pay their CEO’s millions upon millions a year. Far from being effetively regulated; they tend to regulate congress with their fortunes.
For-profit health insurance is a blantant conflict of interest, and the only solution is to remove the profit motive from ensuring health care for everyone.
Retraining for the minions; Re-education for the executives! Send them to the mountainside to harden their bodies, clear their consciences, and awaken their minds!
The whole thing is so simple: For-profit or for-people. We need single-payer.
The only reason Obama/Pelosi/Baucus have pulled single-payer off the table is because they KNOW they are selling us a bag of snakes and they don’t want any competition in the form of a health care system that truly serves the people.
The plan Obama is pushing is the same one that failed in Massachusetts (they HATE it.) But Obama is still feeding the never-ending greed of the corporate Right. The only thing we are guaranteed to get is big fat health care PREMIUMS but terrible health CARE. Why? Because the same group of “business” people will be running the same horrid health care system we have now; they in profits first; they BELIEVE in “one more olive out of the bottle” and constantly pushing for higher rates/more and more money.
The only difference between what we have now and what they are trying to get us to accept is FORCED PAYMENT. In other words, if you can’t afford it, tough. You are going to be FORCED TO HAVE IT even though Obama promised in his campaign speeches that no one would be forced (the difference between the Clinton plan and the Obama plan). The industrialists only see We the People as a “human resource”.
Translation: Round everybody up. Force them to accept a joke we are going to call Health Care as an excuse to further loot the heck out of this country and her people.
This is such a scam!
The reason the health care is so terrible under these “business” people is because as part of the Contract on America, the education of the medical students has been reduced to prescribing excessive amounts of laboratory tests which labs are owned and operated by the industrialists. These industrialists have been consciously and consistently stripping the doctors of their knowledge and abilities so they are dependent on lab tests for profit. The doctors have been reduced to nothing but shoe salesmen for the big box medical companies. These companies have blown smoke up the doctors’ noses, told them that they didn’t go into medicine to help people but to make a living (you may hear “get rich off the suckers”), and the industrialists were the pied piper to show them the way to “take control” and “put yourself in charge of the mindless masses”. I know, I went thorough nursing school.
I’ve heard the rhetoric and seen the results up close and personal… disgusting.
Once upon a time the cable TV people told us that the reason for getting cable was that they PROMISED there would be NO commercials because we would be paying for nothing but movies and shows. Go turn on your TV. Did they mean what they told us? Were we LIED to by the cable TV people? Are they “business” people? Aren’t “business” people the modern day “horse trader”, scammer? Aren’t their lobbyists getting Congress to pass laws that make antenna TV illegal (so the cable gluttons can have a captive audience of payers.) We are being SO had by all of this. America really needs to wake up and see the industrialists for the monsters they really are.
Remember a time when we weren’t slaves to auto insurance? That was another insurance scam that they rammed through Congress. Who is the “they”? The lobbyists for the insurance companies and the lilly-livered Congress who are getting
kickbacks in the form of campaign financing. WE NEED CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM.
We also need to get all of the lobbyists out of DC. Obama promised he’d get rid of the lobbyists but he had no intentions of doing so. And Harry Reid, who chairs in the
Senate, has three sons who are professional lobbyists. And we wonder why we are
getting screwed…
This health care plan is just another insurance scam. The ONLY plan out there that isn’t an insurance industry scam is SINGLE-PAYER. Call DC and tell them that We the People are putting single-payer back on the table and it will stay there until we get it.
Too bad the story is wrong, based apparently on ignorance. Blue Cross and Blue Shield is not one company. It is 39 independent companies that share the brand name. One of those 39 companies, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, explored the possibility of using ads to provide an alternative view point - not to health care reform, but only to one aspect of the various proposals - a government-run health plan. No decision was made to actually produce or run the ads, but someone leaked the storyboards for the ads to the Post. The NC Blue Plan and most other Blue Plans are not-for-profit. But to continue to provide health insurance coverage for more than 100 million Americans, these companies cannot lose money or be put out of business. That’s what a government-run plan could do. Everyone says they want choice…well how much choice will there be if the government is the only health plan in town?
There’s a lot of PR and misinformation going around about health insurance reform and health insurance in general. Unfortunately most people don’t have a clue where the facts lie. The real problem with health insurance is government interference with the free market. Just like with any other area where government gets involved, once the government is involved, the costs skyrocket and everything just becomes a tangled mess.
In the case of health insurance, the government has been mandating what the health insurance companies MUST cover for years, along with many other mandates, and those mandates are primarily what has raised the price of healthcare. Now the President is telling us that the government, who has screwed up virtually everything they have touched, including healthcare, is going to take over and run a single payer plan. Only a moron would think that could make things better.
In a truly free market, health insurance carriers would begin to offer plans that were affordable, or nobody would buy them. Unfortunately, right now, because of a government mandate you can go to the doctor for a sprained hangnail for a minimal cost. And many people do just that, which runs up costs dramatically. But there are many more government mandates, and they all add up to higher costs.
So the solution to the government created health insurance crisis is to get the government completely out of the healthcare arena and let the free market set rates and benefits.
Mark J. Clark, Obama is TERRIBLE on health care reform. That nigger shouldn’t be president anymore. He’s nationalizing the private sector and wants uniform heath care. Uniform health care has failed on several countries in the world like Europe and Canada. It leads to medical staff shortages, longer wait times, and worse facility conditions.
[...] Does this agenda square with national health care reform? Moreover, is its press release consistent with BCBS’ adverts? [...]
[...] MedHeadlines: Blue Cross Blue Shield to Launch Ad Campaign Against Obama Health Plan [...]
Way to go, Phillip. You just can’t help but let your racist self bubble out, forcing most everyone to discount anything reasonable you might have to say about health care, lest they be caught agreeing with a racist douchebag.
[...] or two When the universal health care serpent rears it ugly head My press gang fires broadsides and my crew ensures it’s [...]
Not just one company, but an entire privately run industry is claiming that it will go out of business if it has to compete against a government run alternative. W.T.F??? This can’t be! Every body knows that a privately run business with its private jets, multi-million dollar corporate salaries, bonus and multi-million dollar retirement programs for the exec’s is far more efficient than any government run program. Right? Dam, I am confused. I will have to listen to Rush so I know what to think.
Ken is right - If it just weren’t for those dam hang nail people driving up the cost of health insurance.
Healthcare Reform should put it back in the hands of the healthcare providers. The doctors are the ones that went to school and sacrificed… not the politicians or people at the insurance companies. We need to return it back to the doctors, not the government. Obama is ruining our country and making us a third world country. I have BCBS and am grateful for it. No one interferes with my care. My doctors decide what is best for me and I don’t mind paying a little more for my freedom. I do not want socialized care or do I want more taxes. Obama’s plan will ruin my freedoms. The end of his term can’t soon enough. What an idiot!
RE:Sadra
Obama is ruining our country and making us a third world country.
Your mind appears to be a little behind. Ruining the country and that “third world stuff” all happened in the previous administration.
Check it out! Do a Google.
Oh yeah….let’s eliminate health care for profit. Do you think doctors go to school for 12+years to work for free? after incurring on average 250k in debt to get their training? It’s not just insurance companies that will suffer with Obama’s ridiculously stupid plan. Look at some of the recent surveys done BY DOCTORS by INDEPENDENT sources - close to 56% of currently practicing primary care physicians say they will be finding a new occupation if Obama’s plan goes through. Are you okay with YOUR doctor walking away? We will be left with no choice if our livelihood is taken from us. Don’t think physicians will become government employees under Obama’s plan???? THINK AGAIN. Then ask yourself if free health care is still worth it if all you get is a foreign, non-English speaking doctor that trained in another country and practices 45 minutes away….b/c that’s all that will be left my friends.
“Doctors working for free” woo, wooo, wooooo! Who said anything about doctors working for free????
Eliminate health care for profit? HELL YESS!!!! Health care for profit is a contradiction in terms. You do not make money off of some ones suffering. Health care is a basic necessity that all societies must provide the members of that socity, or the socity means nothing at all. If this country can afford to spend more than the rest of the world does each and every year on its national defense, then it can afford to maintain the health of the public that is supporting that huge defense expenditure.
By the way Kelly hows your banking for profit industry working out for ya?
Mark my word, you will all miss insurers like Blue Cross dearly if this legislation passes. When someone you love is being denied the medicine they need to cure them or eliminate their pain, when you are waiting with your child in a waiting room that resembles a third world country only to be turned away, when you realize you no longer have ANY freedom left at all, then will you realize that you would be willing to sell everything you have just to save your loved one. But, you know what? It won’t matter, because all of the money in the world will not make a difference when the government controls it all. Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson: “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”
How about eliminating frivolous lawsuits? Might as well, since with this reform you won’t have anyone to sue anyway, oh, except the government. Good luck with that. Gods help us all, our beloved America is about to become a very scary place to live…and die.
I am one of those employees working in the Healthcare industry.
I have worked in HMOs that handled both the private and government-run (Medi-Cal/MediCare) plans. While the private plans certainly have issues, I have also seen doctors be paid vouchers for care when the State plans have had shortfalls in money due to budget issues and having to receive reduced payments that does not even cover the cost of care provide. Most of the governmental systems use antiquated technical systems which allows fraud rates to increase.
I have also seen cases where government plans are set up for nonresident aliens where they receive the same healthcare benefits as legal citizens but with lower or no copayments. Under the existing healthcare reform bill in the Senate, nonresident aliens would be covered under the new plan but will not be liable for any taxes to help cover their care. In other words, our tax dollars would once again be covering their care.
What we should be concentrating on is how to fix the current private system in place so that more individuals can receive healthcare, and not trying to replace it with a government plan. We are already seeing Social Security and MediCare struggling to survive with decreasing funds. (Look up the Trustee section of the Social Security website for more details on this…) Who could ever think that we could introduce a healthcare plan for all without having huge increases in personal and corporate tax? And do you really think that the government is going to spend that money carefully?
Look back at how our current stimulus packages allowed the banks to profit while the average citizen sank only further into economic despair…
Do you want this to happen to you and your family?
How can I get involved to help blue cross fight obama’s health care plan. I will do anything I can to ruin it and defeat all of the congressmen who vote for it. They need to be thrown out of office and the sooner the better. Those disgraceful represntatives in Washington are outrageous. We should have no respect and only contempt for them.
The proposed legislation would NOT get rid of employer-based health insurance. Employees in such systems would still have the freedoms they have now. The uninsured and the uninsurable, however, would have the new freedom of medical coverage through a government-sponsored plan. The insurance companies WOULD have some new restraints to make sure they offer effective, affordable care, without unfair restrictions.
If you have BCBS-TN, be aware that the company has denied critical care to some patients even though it seems to be included in the employer-based insurance contract. The massive campus that BCBS recently built for itself in Chattanooga shows that the “non-profit” business has been lucrative and that BCBS reductions in benefits are not the result of any economic hardship.
Right on Gee!
A lot of people are predicting things about the Insurance Reform Bill. As if they can some how predict the future. So let me tell you my prediction about the future of Health Care Insurance if there is no goverment OPTION.
Insurance rates have been going up many times the rate of inflation for as long as I can remember. Each time the insurance companies jack up the rate of healt care, I have to forgo an increase in my pay to make up for it. With no insurance reform this trend will not only contunue, it will accellerate. It will come to a point where the insureance companies will be making so much money that they will break the system and us. Then the will dump the sorry mess right in our laps and we will be forced to bail them out just like the banks.
The “Free Market System” is a big lie. Its a sham and its only objective is to make as much profet as possible regardless of every thing and every one else. Left to its own devices the free market and capitalism will EAT IT SELF! I do not plan on going through anouther fieasco like the banking system. I will not ideally stand by and allow this to happen.
P.S. Sorry about the spelling. I accidently hit the enter key before I had a chance to prof read and spell check it.
Why is health care so expensive? Because health care providers charge so much and because people treat health insurance like a credit card. hospitals need to compete with each other to lower prices. Right now hospitals compete with each other on how high they can charge.
Insurance is not designed to pay for EVERYTHING it’s designed to pay for catastrophic events and conditions. If we STOP making the insurance companies PAY FOR EVERYTHING then costs go down across the board.
Letting the government pay for everything with money it takes away from us via taxes/fees/levies only benefits people who do not pay taxes. Those of us who do pay taxes still have to pay for the high priced health care .. through TAXES. That’s why it’s called wealth redistribution and that’s why it’s called socialism.
“We The People” need to be more responsible and stop asking our government and employers to take care of us. I bought health insurance when I turned 18 years old, from BCBS for $50 a month for a $500 deductible plan. When I was 20 I broke my spine in a motorcycle accident and, at 39, I am still disabled. My premiums are $167.50 a month and my out of pocket expenses are maxed at $2850 (because I converted to an HSA). Plus I don’t have to pay for an employer sponsored plan.
I pay out $4860 a year. So far BCBS has paid out well over one million dollars on my care (supplies, surgeries, equipment, meds, doctor visits, etc). THAT is what insurance is for. To cover everyone’s pre-existing conditions means that premiums would become so high no one could afford them. Do you think you should be able to buy insurance for your car AFTER you wreck it?
Get a clue and make a choice. If you want to be covered then buy a plan and keep it. If you don’t care then don’t get a plan and don’t whine about it when you get hurt.
My wife take no prescribed maintenance medication, weight one-hundred-twenty pounds. Just received a notice that her premiums will jump 16% for 2009. My answer to Bule Cross is F*** you pack of thieves.
Like what you did. Here’s wishing you and yours a very happy and prosperous new year !
Mark J. Clark is a complete IDIOT! His rotten attitude is yet another great example of negative, unproductive elitism usually reserved for the whining Democrats. By the way I’m a Republican and proud of it.
By the way, Dave J’s comments are right on the money. Thank you Dave for telling it as it is. The truth is that many people want or are told they should want a nanny state health care system that costs THEM PERSONALLY little or nothing.Of course someone else, some company, or the govt. is expected to pay for all this “FREE” care.